Mr. Chairman, I join my colleague Mr. Rangel in
thanking you for giving the junior members of this committee the glorious
opportunity of sharing the pain of this inquiry. Mr. Chairman, you are a strong
man, and it has not been easy but we have tried as best we can to give you as
much assistance as possible.

Earlier today, we heard the beginning of the
Preamble to the Constitution of the United States: "We, the people." It's a very
eloquent beginning. But when
that document was completed on the seventeenth of
September in 1787, I was not included in that "We, the people." I felt somehow
for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by
mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court
decision, I have finally been included in "We, the people."

Today I am an inquisitor. An
hyperbole would
not be fictional and would not overstate the solemnness that I feel right now.
My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total. And I am not
going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion,
the destruction, of the Constitution.

"Who can so properly be the inquisitors for the
nation as the representatives of the nation themselves?" "The subjects of its
jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public
men."1
And that's what we're talking about. In other words, [the jurisdiction comes]
from the abuse or violation of some public trust.

It is wrong, I suggest, it is
a misreading of the Constitution for any member here to assert that for a member
to vote for an article of impeachment means that that member must be convinced
that the President should be removed from office. The Constitution doesn't say
that. The powers relating to impeachment are an essential check in the hands of
the body of the Legislature against and upon the encroachments of the Executive.
The division between the two branches of the Legislature, the House and the
Senate, assigning to the one the right to accuse and to the other the right to
judge, the framers of this Constitution were very astute. They did not make the
accusers and the judgers -- and the judges the same person.

We know the nature of impeachment. We've been
talking about it awhile now. It is chiefly designed for the President and his
high ministers to somehow be called into account. It is designed to "bridle" the
Executive if he engages in excesses. "It is designed as a method of national
inquest into the conduct of public men."² The
framers confided in the Congress the power if need be, to remove the President
in order to strike a delicate balance between a President swollen with power and
grown tyrannical, and preservation of the independence of the Executive.

The nature of impeachment: a narrowly
channeled exception to the separation-of-powers maxim. The Federal Convention of
1787 said that. It limited impeachment to high crimes and misdemeanors and
discounted and opposed the term "maladministration." "It is to be used only for
great misdemeanors," so it was said in the North Carolina ratification
convention. And in the Virginia ratification convention: "We do not trust our
liberty to a particular branch. We need one branch to check the other."

"No one need be afraid" -- the North Carolina
ratification convention -- "No one need be afraid that officers who commit
oppression will pass with immunity." "Prosecutions of impeachments will seldom
fail to agitate the passions of the whole community," said Hamilton in the
Federalist Papers, number 65. "We divide into parties more or less friendly or
inimical to the accused."³ I do not mean political
parties in that sense.

The drawing of political lines goes to the
motivation behind impeachment; but impeachment must proceed within the confines
of the constitutional term "high crime[s] and misdemeanors." Of the impeachment
process, it was Woodrow Wilson who said that "Nothing short of the grossest
offenses against the plain law of the land will suffice to give them speed and
effectiveness. Indignation so great as to overgrow party interest may secure a
conviction; but nothing else can."

Common sense would be revolted if we engaged
upon this process for petty reasons. Congress has a lot to do: Appropriations,
Tax Reform, Health Insurance, Campaign Finance Reform, Housing, Environmental
Protection, Energy Sufficiency, Mass Transportation. Pettiness cannot be allowed
to stand in the face of such overwhelming problems. So today we are not being
petty. We are trying to be big, because the task we have before us is a big one.

This morning, in a discussion of the evidence,
we were told that the evidence which purports to support the allegations of
misuse of the CIA by the President is thin. We're told that that evidence is
insufficient. What that recital of the evidence this morning did not include is
what the President did know on June the 23rd, 1972.

The President did know that it was Republican
money, that it was money from the Committee for the Re-Election of the
President, which was found in the possession of one of the burglars arrested on
June the 17th. What the President did know on the 23rd of June was the prior
activities of E. Howard Hunt, which included his participation in the break-in
of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, which included Howard Hunt's participation in
the Dita Beard ITT affair, which included Howard Hunt's fabrication of cables
designed to discredit the Kennedy Administration.

We were further cautioned today that perhaps
these proceedings ought to be delayed because certainly there would be new
evidence forthcoming from the President of the United States. There has not even
been an obfuscated indication that this committee would receive any additional
materials from the President. The committee subpoena is outstanding, and if the
President wants to supply that material, the committee sits here. The fact is
that on yesterday, the American people waited with great anxiety for eight
hours, not knowing whether their President would obey an order of the Supreme
Court of the United States.

At this point, I would like to juxtapose a few
of the impeachment criteria with some of the actions the President has engaged
in. Impeachment criteria: James Madison, from the Virginia ratification
convention. "If the President be connected in any suspicious manner with any
person and there be grounds to believe that he will shelter him, he may be
impeached."

We have heard time and time again that the
evidence reflects the payment to defendants money. The President had knowledge
that these funds were being paid and these were funds collected for the 1972
presidential campaign. We know that the President met with Mr. Henry Petersen 27
times to discuss matters related to Watergate, and immediately thereafter met
with the very persons who were implicated in the information Mr. Petersen was
receiving. The words are: "If the President is connected in any suspicious manner
with any person and there be grounds to believe that he will shelter that
person, he may be impeached."

Justice Story: "Impeachment" is attended --
"is
intended for occasional and extraordinary cases where a superior power acting
for the whole people is put into operation to protect their rights and rescue
their liberties from violations." We know about the Huston plan. We know about
the break-in of the psychiatrist's office. We know that there was absolute
complete direction on September 3rd when the President indicated that a
surreptitious entry had been made in Dr. Fielding's office, after having met
with Mr. Ehrlichman and Mr. Young. "Protect their rights." "Rescue their liberties
from violation."

The Carolina ratification convention
impeachment criteria: those are impeachable "who behave amiss or betray their
public trust."4 Beginning shortly after the Watergate break-in
and continuing to the present time, the President has engaged in a series of
public statements and actions designed to thwart the lawful investigation by
government prosecutors. Moreover, the President has made public announcements
and assertions bearing on the Watergate case, which the evidence will show he
knew to be false. These assertions, false assertions, impeachable, those who
misbehave. Those who "behave amiss or betray the public trust."

James Madison again at the Constitutional
Convention: "A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the
Constitution." The Constitution charges the President with the
task of taking care that the laws be faithfully executed, and yet the President
has counseled his aides to commit perjury, willfully disregard the secrecy of
grand jury proceedings, conceal surreptitious entry, attempt to compromise a
federal judge, while publicly displaying his cooperation with the processes of
criminal justice. "A President is impeachable if he attempts to
subvert the Constitution."

If the impeachment provision in the
Constitution of the United States will not reach the offenses charged here, then
perhaps that 18th-century Constitution should be abandoned to a 20th-century
paper shredder!

Has the President committed offenses, and
planned, and directed, and acquiesced in a course of conduct which the
Constitution will not tolerate? That's the question. We know that. We know the
question. We should now forthwith proceed to answer the question. It is reason,
and not passion, which must guide our deliberations, guide our debate, and guide
our decision.